Gordon Cook (1927–1985) was a painter, printmaker and sculptor associated with the Bay Area Figurative movement. Born in Chicago, he earned his B.F.A. from Illinois Wesleyan University in 1950 and pursued graduate studies in printmaking with Mauricio Lasansky at the University of Iowa. After moving to San Francisco in 1951, Cook became a founding member of the Bay Printmakers Society. During the late 1960s and 1970s, he increasingly focused on painting, creating intimate still lifes, portraits and atmospheric landscapes of the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta. His work combined precise observation with expressive brushwork, revealing unexpected beauty in ordinary subjects. Closely associated with Joan Brown, Manuel Neri and Wayne Thiebaud, Cook taught at the University California, Davis, from 1974–75 and returned as a visiting lecturer in winter 1979. His work is represented in the collections of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art and Smithsonian American Art Museum.